While I haven't been burnt on all the DLC, I must admit it has been creeping towards really bad territory, and honestly crept past the line without me noticing.

I was already not going to buy into the game before reviews (especially forum member reviews) so I've resigned myself to the idea that if they somehow manage to make a good standalone dragon age that makes up for the many negative aspects of DA3, I might stand to pay a little extra. But what I won't do is pay full price sight unseen for the copy and paste fest that was DA2.

I know it's cliché to say, but it's true. After Bioware was purchased by EA, their overall quality went to crap. DA3, Strar Wars MMO, Mass Effect (Wasn't bad but could have been so much better. And the ending, oy vey!). I'm truly hoping for a return to what was so great about DA Orgins, but I'm not pre ordering. Bioware has lost that ability with me.

Well, in BG1 you could have the game pause after everyone has taken their combat 'round'. So it more or less was actual 'turn based'. Not sure on the others offhand.

No, no, no! This was a marketing move to appease AD&D fans. Adding an automatic pause every sixth second in combat (which is what this was) doesn't change squat. It's still real time with pause. Turn based, by its very definition, requires that each character in combat does his actions before the next character in line can do his, and so on, until everyone has moved and it starts over from the top of the list. There is middle ground, but it's not at all similar to the BG approach. An example would be a system where each side in the battle can move their characters in any order they like, moving all of them (perhaps even going back and forth between them. Think XCOM) before the other side can do anything. This is still true turn based gaming. Once you add time as a major factor (with the sole exception of time limits for how long you can spend doing a turn) where every character acts at the same time, the system becomes real time.

There's also something called simultaneous turn based, but that's its entirely own thing, completely separate from regular turn based (and still not at all similar to real time). It's also almost never used, because 9 times out of 10 it sucks.

Simultaneous turn based has a significant problem of the player having no control, resulting in having to program way too much ahead of time for a turn, or not having any control.

Honestly, real-time pause-able, and with a time slider or settings is the best way to go if not doing turn based. People can play full real-time if they want, pause it if they want, and if the real-time between pauses is still too much, reduce the flow of time so that you can react to everything.

X-COM Apocalypse's implementation of this is still one of the best I've seen, although I'm sure there's some element of rose colored glasses. The same goes for most RPG of this type.

Honestly, real-time pause-able, and with a time slider or settings is the best way to go if not doing turn based. People can play full real-time if they want, pause it if they want, and if the real-time between pauses is still too much, reduce the flow of time so that you can react to everything.

Agreed. I'll always prefer turn based, but the BG/Dragon Age way of handling things works for me. It's just the endless flow of "but BG could be played turn based", an argument that has been around for over 10 years and has been blatantly wrong the entire time, that rubs me the wrong way.

I'm recently replaying Skyrim (quit earlier due to bugs) and the world design is simply the best I have ever seen in any video game. The combat system is lacking though (Bethesda just doesn't get it even after so many Elder Scrolls games).

Wouldn't it be awesome if Skyrim had Dark Souls combat? Or Dragon's Dogma combat, for that matter.

I'm recently replaying Skyrim (quit earlier due to bugs) and the world design is simply the best I have ever seen in any video game. The combat system is lacking though (Bethesda just doesn't get it even after so many Elder Scrolls games).

Wouldn't it be awesome if Skyrim had Dark Souls combat? Or Dragon's Dogma combat, for that matter.

Not for us non twitch players it wouldn't. While I enjoyed most things about Dark souls I had to give up because I never got good enough at the combat.

There's ways to improve it without resorting to arbitrarily locked animation systems. There's plenty of ways now to combine need for execution, without the clunky locked systems that those games employ.

There's ways to improve it without resorting to arbitrarily locked animation systems. There's plenty of ways now to combine need for execution, without the clunky locked systems that those games employ.

You say clunky and I say brilliant. Guess I am alone on wishing for a game that mixed Skyrim and Dark Souls.

There's ways to improve it without resorting to arbitrarily locked animation systems. There's plenty of ways now to combine need for execution, without the clunky locked systems that those games employ.

You say clunky and I say brilliant. Guess I am alone on wishing for a game that mixed Skyrim and Dark Souls.

You obviously got a good handle down on Dark Souls combat that gave you a fair amount of success. The game would be a blast if I could do that. There are other things they could do to help Skyrim and the other Elder scroll games. Get rid of the damn auto leveling. Get rid of the need to be able to go anywhere on the map from day one and have success. Have some very, very tough enemies that could only be defeated by high level characters having exotic equipment they either discovered through arduous quests or arcane difficult crafting. Bethesda, as has been said, are the only people who could make fighting a dragon routine and boring. But this would be a radical departure for the series and will never come close to happening. Also, they sell millions and millions of these games and print money so they have every right to tell me to shut up. Sounds like I hate the series but I don't. I play them through and complete all but the most obscure stuff. But each iteration has been a little less exciting than the last, and I do agree that combat could be a lot more exciting.

With Bioware I've come to accept some clunky combat scenarios. It's the story that I show up to see....

Even Bioware's recent stories seem designed by committee, as if they're sitting in a group and going through a checklist. DA2 got particularly bad because of the way they completely destroyed Anders (I mean, is there a single human being who played the DA1 expansion with Anders in his party who liked what they did with him in DA2? Anyone?), because it felt random, forced and disjointed, and because several stories were so buggy that they were impossible to finish (I couldn't finish my romance subplot because of this, for example).

Bioware doesn't exist any more. There's just EA now. I don't want EA to write my stories, as they appear to write solely based on market research. Dragon Age 1 was bold and interesting, with a story that seemed inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire in its focus on politics and unusual settings. DA2 felt like a cheap cash-in. Combine this with their other two reasonably recent games (Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic), and it's easy to see that everything we loved about Bioware is long gone.

There are far, far, FAR better storytellers among game developers out there. If this is the part of the games that interests you, have a look at the Witcher series as well as the various Kickstarter games that are starting to come out. Expeditions: Conquistador is a good start, a game that is made on a very low budget yet has writing that is a thousand times better than what Bioware/EA is able to regurgitate these days.

Yes, I'm bitter. I hate seeing corporations step all over things I love.

With Bioware I've come to accept some clunky combat scenarios. It's the story that I show up to see....

Even Bioware's recent stories seem designed by committee, as if they're sitting in a group and going through a checklist. DA2 got particularly bad because of the way they completely destroyed Anders (I mean, is there a single human being who played the DA1 expansion with Anders in his party who liked what they did with him in DA2? Anyone?), because it felt random, forced and disjointed, and because several stories were so buggy that they were impossible to finish (I couldn't finish my romance subplot because of this, for example).

Bioware doesn't exist any more. There's just EA now. I don't want EA to write my stories, as they appear to write solely based on market research. Dragon Age 1 was bold and interesting, with a story that seemed inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire in its focus on politics and unusual settings. DA2 felt like a cheap cash-in. Combine this with their other two reasonably recent games (Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic), and it's easy to see that everything we loved about Bioware is long gone.

There are far, far, FAR better storytellers among game developers out there. If this is the part of the games that interests you, have a look at the Witcher series as well as the various Kickstarter games that are starting to come out. Expeditions: Conquistador is a good start, a game that is made on a very low budget yet has writing that is a thousand times better than what Bioware/EA is able to regurgitate these days.

Yes, I'm bitter. I hate seeing corporations step all over things I love.

I think Obsidian tells some of the best stories in the biz. It's a shame that they ship a boxed product that is overflowing with roaches....

I'm willing to give them one more shot for DAIII in hopes it can be what DAO was for me, which is the best rpg in a decade. It sounds like they are taking the criticisms of DAII to heart. I also thin CD projeckt does a great job in storytelling. can't wait for Witcher 3 and especially Cyberpunk 2077.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt too, but as with any video game I'll wait & see rather than preordering or buying day 1. I think there's still plenty of good storytelling left at Bioware, but a problem I see is that they have their best writers stretched too thin or they can't hold on to them. They lost Drew Karpyshyn last year to the greater world of writing, and David Gaider spent much of his time during DAII writing novels - he's credited as a major contributor DA II, but his involvement was the creation of the characters Cassandra, Fenris, and Meredith. On a positive note he's supposed to have had much more of his time dedicated to DA III: Inquisition, so that might be the difference that gets it back to the track of DA: Origins. I do generally agree though, that EA is pretty damn poor at instilling strong storytelling in many of their games.

I'm recently replaying Skyrim (quit earlier due to bugs) and the world design is simply the best I have ever seen in any video game. The combat system is lacking though (Bethesda just doesn't get it even after so many Elder Scrolls games).

Wouldn't it be awesome if Skyrim had Dark Souls combat? Or Dragon's Dogma combat, for that matter.

Not for us non twitch players it wouldn't. While I enjoyed most things about Dark souls I had to give up because I never got good enough at the combat.

Have you tried Dragon's Dogma? The combat is not ultra twitchy, it's a bit more complex than Elder Scrolls combat and much much more fluid (which is what I hate about ES combat). You can see Capcom's fighting game heritage come out in that game. DD combat (even if they slowed it down a touch so as not to be to great a change) in an ES world would be amazing.